Hello, I Love You
by TwistedSky
Summary: Bonnie and Damon fic. A birthday request for a friend. They say goodbye, and it's a bit like saying a really big hello. Minor thoughts based on certain spoilers for The Last Dance.


I disclaim. Written for a lovely tweep! Happy birthday Jay!

XXXXXX

Saving Elena.

It's the priority, and it feels like it's been the priority for so long. Damon sits next to his brother, questioning whether Bonnie can help them pull this off.

She needs to, there isn't really much of a choice anymore, because all of their lives and destinies seem tied to Elena now—to saving Elena, which means Bonnie needs to be ready. They all do.

XXXX

"Stop doing this, Jeremy." Bonnie is tired of him doing this, of him trying to stop her from being who she is, of him trying to stop her from fulfilling her destiny.

She's probably going to die.

She's made peace with that.

XXXX

Jeremy isn't happy, "It could kill her, it could kill both of them." Damon misses most of the 'fun' with Klaus!Alaric . . . and he just kind of starts to think.

He worries as they realize they can't find Bonnie and Elena, and barely relaxes after Bonnie manages to expel Klaus from Alaric's body, before collapsing in Jeremy's arms.

He needs to do something to turn this around, to make this fun again.

XXXX

Damon dances with Elena, "I've got moves you've never seen," he says, knowing that's a double entendre, that there's so much more to his words, his movements, to everything that he is, and everything that she is. He loves her.

And deep down he thinks she loves him too.

She just needs time, or at least this is what he tells himself.

He doesn't really believe it.

XXXX

He strolls around after dancing with Elena, after handing her off to Stefan, and comes across Bonnie, surprisingly alone.

He slides his arm around the back of her neck. "Hello Bon Bon."

She rolls her eyes and is going to pull free, but then realizes he has something to say. "Say it. Whatever it is."

He's somber, serious. "Do you have enough power to kill Klaus?"

Bonnie sighs slightly. "Yes," she's ready. She's preparing herself for that moment, because she is not a fool. This will kill her.

"Most of the time I'm selfish," he says conversationally.

"True," she says, smiling slightly.

"I knew Emily, and I've known many other witches over the years. If you overdo it, it could kill you."

"I know," she replies.

He nods slightly, and grabs onto her hand, awkwardly enough as she's raising it up, probably to move his arm off of her.

They take a moment, just the two of them in the midst of the loud music and the happy dancing, and everything else that it is. They seem to move outside of time and space, just standing there, swaying slightly.

"Are you sure?" he hears himself ask. That's not what he wanted to ask, he needs to save Elena, he doesn't want to worry about Bonnie—but although she isn't exactly his biggest supporter, she's done a lot to help them, including saving him multiple times.

She's still judgy, but he supposes there's a lot more to her than he wants to think about. She could die, and none of them can stop that.

They have to let her.

She pulls her hand out from under his and he lets her go. He pulls her around to look at him. "Be ready."

She nods. "I was born for this, Damon." She says it with finality, with acceptance of what is to come.

That unnerves him.

XXXX

She sits outside, waiting. Just waiting.

She's cross-legged on the ground, in a nice clearing, so quiet and still that it's almost like she's part of the environment around her.

She might as well be.

A little bird decides that she is, and lands on her head.

"Red birds," Damon says. "Haven't seen then in Mystic Falls in . . . a little over a century. I still don't know what they're called."

It's a comical sort of scene, the bird is on her head and she has no intention of moving and Damon is smirking at her, she can feel it, even though her eyes are closed and she certainly can't see it.

"Go away, Damon."

"I brought you the moonstone, like you wanted." She wants to see if there is truly a way to destroy it, or if there were some sort of way to curse it so that it would backfire on Klaus.

"I thought Stefan was supposed to bring it," she doesn't really care.

"Elena—" he says.

It's all he needs to say.

He places the moonstone in her upward-facing palm. She feels a bit of a flicker of energy like she does every time she touches him. The whole vampire thing still gets to her, sadly, but she doesn't outwardly react.

"Thank you," she says, still not opening up her eyes.

"You're welcome, little bird."

Her eyes flutter open at that, but he's already gone. She mumbles to herself, "What the hell does that mean?"

The bird on her head chirps, as if to answer her question.

Bonnie blinks. The bird doesn't know either. She shakes her head slightly and watches as the bird flies back up into the air.

XXXX

Bonnie waits where the witches were killed. She mentally dares Klaus's witch to try to use that power. It's hers.

"Klaus has Elena," Damon says when he shows up. "He should be headed here soon," he sounds like he's barely controlling himself, barely forcing down his fear.

Bonnie smiles slightly. "I know. It'll be okay. I can do this."

Damon nods, as if he believes her, which he wants to.

Then again, he knows something she doesn't.

XXXX

Bonnie takes everything, every ounce of energy she has, everything she has inside of her, her love of her friends, her pain, her strength, her _everything_ and watches as Klaus sinks to the ground, holding his head, and tries to fight past the block that the other witch has put in place. He's standing there, fighting her, and normally he'd probably be stronger than her, but she is _everything_ right now, she's tapping into the strength of many witches. She's got this under control, she thinks with the last part of her thinking mind.

"The witch," she says to Damon and Stefan, who are fighting off some of Klaus's personal army. She needs _someone_ to help her out here. She feels herself drifting, almost leaving her body.

It's strange.

It's overwhelmingly terrifying.

XXXX

He knows how much Elena loves Bonnie, and he knows that as much as she seems to hate him, and he knows he needs to save her.

Every night she goes to sleep, and he sneaks into her house and stares down at her, and then sneaks some of his blood into her, just in case the next day will be her next. It's the kind of thing she'll never forgive.

It's the kind of thing he has to do anyway.

And if he's honest . . . it's not just because of Elena.

XXXX

She opens up her eyes, and is surprised. She looks around and sees that everyone is there. Everyone is safe.

They did it.

"I thought I'd died."

There's a moment of silence.

It dawns on her. Her face contorts in pain and she screams.

Elena kneels down next to her, holding her tightly, but Stefan pulls her away when he sees the hunger on her face.

She struggles and Damon is the one to encircle his arms around her, and they watch Stefan hold Elena as she cries. It's at that moment that Damon realizes that Elena really is never going to choose him, and holds on a little tighter to Bonnie, unconsciously.

Bonnie realizes what it means, and pulls away from Damon, standing up and looking down at him. "I hate you. Why—_why_?" And she stalks off.

There is no forgiveness for this.

XXXX

She's not Vicky, she's not Caroline. She doesn't want to be a vampire, she's not going to slip, she's not going to transition. She's Bonnie Bennett, and she is not going to be a vampire.

She'd rather be dead.

Damon has other plans.

XXXX

"Drink," Damon sighs. He looks down at the blood in front of him—human, of course, because he doesn't really care whether she's a vegetarian vampire or not.

"No," she narrows her eyes, and watches with a sick sort of perverted pleasure as he clutches at his head in pain.

"We've come this far," he says once she's stopped giving him aneurisms.

"You did this to me, I don't-" she forces back a tear. This is the last thing she wants to do, the last thing she wants to become.

"I know, you don't want it. I didn't either—" he trails off, realizing he hadn't meant to be so honest with her, it had just slipped out.

"What?" she looks confused.

"Nothing," he says, pretending that it really is nothing. It's never really nothing, because it's always something. It's always him missing being human. He misses it so much it aches inside of him, and it's weird because he knows Stefan feels the same way.

And it finally hits Damon—he finally understands what he's done to Bonnie.

Some would prefer death over this slow torture.

It lasts an eternity.

XXXX

She screws up, big time. She doesn't kill a man, but she almost does. She'd gone to _die_, that's what she'd wanted. Instead she's a vampire now.

She's not sure whether to hate herself or Damon more.

She swears if it weren't for Caroline and Elena, she doesn't know where she'd be. They support her, love her, and she wonders how the hell this became her life.

So much has changed.

When Bonnie ends things with Jeremy, it's almost a relief. She wonders what they'd ever had in common before—they were both reasonably pretty she supposed, and they loved Elena.

She feels so different now—removed from reality. Jeremy doesn't even feel real anymore, nothing does.

Nothing except the pain, the guilt—the rage she directs at Damon.

XXXX

"I'll teach you," he offers. It's not really an offer or a question, it's just . . . reality.

Damon teaches Bonnie how to be a vampire. Simple, right?

It's less simple when she picks a fight with him and pushes him against the wall, shattering a mirror—Bonnie supposes there's not much more bad that can happen to her so she ignores that—and causing numerous books to fall off a nearby shelf.

She raises an eyebrow, taunting him.

He almost seems to growl, but then he smirks instead, vamp-speeding her outside, shoving her against the ground. "I suppose we should take this outside if you're going to get rough."

She glares at him.

She reaches up and slaps him. "I don't need your help."

He catches her arm, holds it. "I think you do."

It's clear from the outset that Damon is the one to kiss Bonnie—not the other way around—but she kisses back.

He pulls away, staring down at her.

"I'm hungry," she blurts out randomly, uncontrollably.

He laughs—a real sort of laugh, that seems to shake his entire body.

Like a catharsis. "My little bird, always hungry."

"I'm not—" she starts to say his little bird, but then she stops.

She doesn't mind the nickname she supposes.

"At least you aren't calling me Bon Bon anymore," she points out. "I was about to start calling you Dum Dum."

"Clever."

"I thought so."

They smile at each other, ridiculously, then Damon lifts himself off of her, and the moment should end, but it doesn't. It seems to extend and extend, and nothing is breaking it.

"Hi," he says.

"Hey," she says.

It's odd.

But even though they then proceed to same goodbye, it's really like they're saying a really big hello.

XXXX

"How could you do this to me?" Elena asks him.

"It's not about you," he says, which is strange, because that's what he'd told himself. It was supposed to be about her.

But it isn't.

As Damon stares at Elena, he wonders whether it was _ever_ really about her.

XXXX

It's confusing.

He doesn't like her, and she doesn't really like him, but he changed her, and somehow that makes a difference.

"Are you just feeling guilty?" she asks one day.

He smiles at her slightly. "I don't know."

It's honest, so she'll take it.

XXXX

"There's a bird on your head," he says.

She opens her eyes and glares at him even though he can't see her face. "We _are_ outside. It happens."

"True. But there's a bird on my bird. It's—"

"Stop calling me a bird."

He just raises an eyebrow, and she can practically feel it.

"And stop calling me _your_ bird." She resents that.

"Okay," he agrees simply.

She hadn't expected him to agree so easily, and she's not particularly happy about it.

XXXX

"Are you with me to punish yourself?"

"No," she replies simply, that's all she needs and wants to say on the subject. It's simple.

XXXX

"I'm sorry," he says.

"Are you really?" Sometimes she isn't sure whether to believe him.

"Yes," he is.

"Then I'm not the only person you need to apologize to."

"I know. But I still owe you an apology."

She lies there, her head on his chest. "I'm sorry too."

He doesn't say anything, it's an odd sort of thing to say, but he does get it.

He pulls her closer to him, and it's rather like a thank you, and that's all that needs to be said.

XXXX

"You said you missed being human," she says nervously.

She's like a little ball of energy.

"I—" he just nods. Obviously she remembers that he said that, it's not like he can take back the words.

"I can't make you human—" though she wants to. "But I can let you be human for a day."

"How?"

"I just can," she says.

"Breathing, being out in the sun without this ring, _feeling_, not wanting to drain someone of blood, actually human?" He seems a little shocked. And a bit like a kid in a candy shop, staring at all of the choices and being told he can have whatever he wants.

She nods.

She doesn't know it, but it's at this moment that he knows he's in love with her—though it's not the moment he's fallen completely. That moment is already long past.

XXXX

It's very different.

She's not in love with someone else—and that someone else is certainly not his brother.

He doesn't hurt.

He feels an almost unbearable lightness of being.

He looks into her eyes. "I love you."

And it's also different because she says it back. "I love you too."


End file.
